Canadian Humanitarian NGO & Canadian Lobster Fisherman involved In Water & Drip Irrigation Community Development in Mali, West Africa. Living Stories. Listening To Stories. Looking for Moments & Memories. Writes very poorly, and is oh so struggling to balance two very different lives.

My New Lobster Traps Are Progressing

We call them “cookies”. No, cookies are not lobster bait. I was drilling the sills of the new lobster traps so I could tie on the cross haul-ups and then attach these rubber cookies.
We make a small loop in the main line that we put over the rubber disc. Saves tying and untying knots that can get very tight after months of fishing. On setting or landing day, it is a snap to attach or undo the trap lines very quickly this way.

We have all fifty traps headed and laced up now. My son Ben was cutting the cross haul-ups and cookie ropes. My father was burning the ends of the ropes with a torch to prevent the ends from fraying. I drilled the holes in the sills and tied on the ropes you see.

Will finish the other half Monday.

Later this week I’ll show you how we put the bait spikes we call “Skivers”, and how we are making the door hinges.

J. R.R. TOLKIEN – PEACE IS NEVER FREE

"………….. and there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it."
J. R.R. Tolkien "The Fellowship of the Ring" , 1985, George & Allen & Urwin Pub LTD(Page 22-23 prologue)

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Pictures

Photo is attributed as, “The Graves Of A Catholic Woman And Her Protestant Husband Seperated By A Wall, Holland, 1888.”

Bones placed in Animistic Religious Ritual

Jean Claude spreading already fermented coco out to dry.

My son Ted with me on a return trip to Ivory Coast in 2009. His first time back in Ivory coast since his childhood. Coffee drying.

Some of my coco growing friends. A happy reunion in 2009. Man I miss these guys.

90 km In the Bush.Doing Drought Season Drip Irrigated Gardens.

View From the Pier in Segou.

Farming tools have not changed for these people for 300 years.

Our orange lady, who passed away.

By the Baffond on Niaradougou. By the Potato fields.

Road to Bankagooma Land

Storage Granery for Millet to feed the family though 9 months of drought in Sahel.